Do you have a source for that? Because Bioware has a history of chasing trends on their own volition, which is why ME went more shooter and why they decided to make Anthem. I wouldn't be surprised, but all I've really heard that would be on EA is an insistence on Frostbite engine.
It's mostly logical inferrence. There's an interview Mark Darrah did back in 2014 where he talked about how after Skyrim released it forced them to hard pivot production towards making an open world game. He also cites sales figures as the reasoning.
EA was known to cite sales figures as the reason to greenlight or cancel projects at the time. Like Andrew Wilson famously asked Amy Hennig about their upcoming singleplayer Star Wars game "FIFA Ultimate Team makes a billion dollars a year.' Where's your version of that?”"
Originally Posted by Rahaya
I'm not sure you can say Inquisition is an example when Witcher 3 was open world out the very next year or that Ubisoft's descent into nonsense cancels out Breath of the Wild?
The Witcher 3 is a bit more of a complex example as CD Projekt wasn't strictly inspired by Skyrim. They were also progressing in a more open direction as their games evolved. The Witcher 2 for example had extremely massive worldspaces and while it wasn't a true open world game it was pretty close. With The Witcher 3 the game felt less Skyrim and more like Red Dead Redemption. CD Projekt is also an independent studio that self finances their games similar to Larian. And they were known even back then for not bending to publisher or investor demands. Like a good example is they mentioned one of their earliest publishing agreements for the Witcher 1 demanded adding the option for Geralt to be a woman. Which they rejected as it was an RPG series based on a set of novels with a set protagonist.
Originally Posted by Rahaya
Just being open world isn't inherently bad.
It's not necessarily a bad thing, however the devil's always in the details. When a publisher mandates a genre change like this it often causes issues which leads to the story and pacing suffering. Open world games overwhelmingly tend to suffer from pacing issues due to the player being able to access most of the content right at the start of the game. Bioware in particular I don't think adapted to this very well.
Originally Posted by Rahaya
However, a 'chilling' effect on RPGs that can't get the funds for big presentation is a negative all around. If those turn based strategic RPGs or tabletop port RPGs don't have full VO, who's playing it and will it be enough to offset the cost?
BG3 doing as well as it does means more turn based strategic or tabletop based rpgs might get greenlit with larger budgets. I think that's a far better net positive.
Originally Posted by vometia
My understanding is that with e.g. Dragon Age 2, though EA pushed them with the probably unreasonably short timescale, the artistic choices with spiky graphics and a soundtrack to match, waves of combat with abseiling goons (popularised by the SAS 40-odd years ago, and later revealed that they actually thought it was a terrible idea but tptb insisted as it made good TV) and perhaps most egregiously the "awesome button" were entirely Bioware decisions; as was the notoriously bad ending of ME3. In comparison, I actually preferred Inquisition and thought it was far better realised, though it was clear that some elements of the game really suffered due to them being the ones who were forced to figure out how to make the suddenly compulsory Frostbite engine do something it was never designed to do.
This is true yes not all of the issues with Bioware's post DAO games were EA's fault. A huge amount of issues were Bioware's fault. And I personally think it was the slow exodus of developers that left the studio after the EA buyout. You can see it with how few developers worked on ME1 stayed until ME3. Bioware went from a studio where developers would work at the same job for 10-15 years (Casey Hudson started at the company working on Baldur's Gate 1's FMVs) to one where developers work short term contracts and they rely on outsourcing.
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I think there is a tendency to assume some studios can do no wrong and others can do no right; the divide between the practically identical Fallout 3 and New Vegas highlights the issue, at least from my perspective, and some people are still going on about it today. What I found especially amusing was the claim that if left to their own devices, Obsidian would do a pre-first-person-style game in the fixed isometric style with complicated and awkward gameplay and bad graphics, just like a proper game should be. And they produced The Outer Worlds, which was more like a Bethesda game than ever. Though still with that very dry Obsidian humour, obvs., because that's what they do.
I agree with this as well. With regards to New Vegas people often forget that the game was largely Obsidian repurposing their ideas from Interplay's cancelled Fallout 3 (Which many of the developers also worked on). So it effectively had a really long pre-production period that most other games don't have the luxury of.
Another factor is more of an industry wide issue that started during the 2010s. Tim Cain referred to it as the loss of "generalists". Which are developers that can work more than 1 job on a project. It ends up leading to a too many cooks issue and the game takes far longer to make. (Games now take a decade or more to finish). Additionally individual developers end up having very little say or impact on the project which causes it to also creatively suffer. In the distant past with games like Doom you'd see developers like Sandy Petersen suggest off the cuff "maybe the shotgun should feel satisfying to fire" and they'd put it in.
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IMHO the main "chilling effect" is large publishers chasing deadlines and wanting the widest possible audience at any cost; and the ability to bilk customers monthly, hence the usual suspects forcing multi-player into single-player games.
Ironically I think the multiplayer in Mass Effect 3 was the best aspect of the game.
